SOFT RIOT » MIXES / PLAYLISTS

WHITE LODGE 006 : WINTER WAVES AND CRYPTIC CAVES

SOFT RIOT — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 21:21:13 +0000

A little over one year ago a mix was posted on here called “Sparkwood and Twenty One“, in reference to the nighttime meeting point of various characters in the cult TV show Twin Peaks. It was intended to be filmic and mysterious, like wandering around late at night in the snow through some secretive forest.

This mix, Winter Waves and Cryptic Caves, carries out the same theme but broadens the stylings somewhat. It’s also worth noting the release years of the tracks included span over thirty years! Incorporating psychedelic drones, film soundtracks, electro-acoustics, slow ballads and minimalist electronics; the track selections for this total is a hair of being just under two hours of material, so grab yourself a beverage of choice and sink into where you are sitting. Best enjoyed in various states of consciousness or contemplation. I say this as I have a tendency to listen to such music when going to sleep or when sick in bed.

Try it on. Stay in out of the unforgiving weather. An atmospheric mix for listening to under the influence of medication (whether legal or illegal) or staring out the misted window thinking about bird’s feathers and dark matter.

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1. THE FOR CARNATION | Being Held 2000
2. BLACKOUT BEACH | Biloxi, In A Grove, Cleans Out His Eyes 2009
3. LICHENS | Vevor of Agassou 2007
4. THIS MORTAL COIL | Waves Become Wings 1984
5. YELLOWKNIVES | Sweat Logic 2007
6. TANGERINE DREAM | Creation (Soundtrack to Sorcerer) 1977
6. MATER SUSPIRIA VISION | The Afterlife 2010
7. SUBPOENA THE PAST | Altitude On Ice 1998
8. AIX EM KLEMM | The Girl With The Flesh Coloured Crayon 2000
9. LALO SCHIFRIN | Main Theme (Soundtrack to THX 1138) 1971
10. RAMASES | Molecular Delusion 1971
11. CINDYTALK | Disintegrate 1989
12. TAMARYN | Golden Song 2009
13. UNWOUND | Abstraktions 1993
14. I†† | Ph▲sing 2010
15. ELISA WAUT | Russia 1985
16. BRUCE GILBERT | Work For “Do You Me? I Did.” (Part 3) 1982
17. COLIN NEWMAN | Fish 4 1982
18. SUSAN JUSTIN | Titles (Soundtrack to Forbidden World) 1982
19. JOHN FOXX | Film One 1980
20. CABARET VOLTAIRE | Partially Submerged 1978
21. GROWING | In The Shadow Of The Mountain 2005
22. ZOLA JESUS | Run Me Out 2010
23. SECOND LAYER | Black Flowers 1981

WHITE LODGE 005 : SYNTH OR SWIM

SOFT RIOT — Mon, 03 May 2010 20:14:19 +0000

I’ll save the long-winded personal reflections for this mix and just deliver it straight as it is: a representative slice out of the pool of synth-saturated, future-thinking music that I love, namely between the years of 1978 to 1985. A number of these tracks have been with me for a long while, thrown in crusty old mix tapes for people or rotated as vinyl on the decks back when I used to DJ quite frequently in the early naughties. Some of them are more recent discoveries. Some are recommendations or discoveries from friends over the years. Some of the tracks are by bands that had some notable popularity at the time and others more obscured by time (well, we can all admit blogging and the internet has unearthed quite a few of them!).

As most of my vinyl sits in some random storage warehouse in a suburb of Vancouver, a number of these tracks existed as digital counterparts to the vinyl or they were new numbers that were unearthed through the magic of the internet. There was plenty to select from and then condensed down to this mix, so I’ll likely compile a “Synth or Swim II” in the near future.

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WHITE LODGE 004 : DYE YOUR HAIR BLACK AND ABSORB ALL “WAVES”

SOFT RIOT — Sat, 01 May 2010 08:27:26 +0000

This is a continuation of a little story, a narrative told in music from the previous installment of the White Lodge, number 003 to be exact. This is collection of tracks that as a whole aim to document the stylistic “shift” in music of artists coming out of the haze of the hardcore/punk/indie maelstrom of the early to mid 90s happening mainly in the US. This shift all being from a amber-hazed viewpoint of a contemporary version of myself recollecting how I viewed it all when it was actually happening: the bands I picked up on and the threads I started to observe being developed.

As much as we had a lot of venom and the impulse to trash about the in hardcore/punk arena, a lot of us also had a keen interest in the more artistic side of music of times earlier: the austerity, the presentation, the angle… whether it be icily cool cold wave, stylish new romanticism, funky new wave, gothic theatrics or skronky late 70s post-punk — these styles were starting to be mined up again after a good number of years in the mainstream faux grit of “grunge” and metal through an updated lens of the time: the mid to late 90s. This particular mix has been sequenced in a loose chronological order, encompassing a time period starting in 1995 and ending sometime in 2000. From 2000 onward the post-punk and synth revival thing sort of exploded and bands hatched and made flight like a cloud of buzzing locusts. I’ve even managed to allow myself to be a bit cheeky and stick one of my old bands on here, as I felt like we were rolling along the same tracks as some of the artists (and had played alongside a few of them to).

The details of what sort of movement this was are hazy and documented in a patchy manner, but here’s the segments I’ve strung together to form some sort of synopsis. Some of you might even identify or remember these and have a bit of a chuckle :

White belts / Spock rock / Kids prowling the classifieds for Roland Juno synthesizers (the popular choice at the time) / Band websites starting with “http://www.geocities.com/~sunsetstrip” / Mail order of records from Bottlenekk Distribution / Tours down the I-5 / The hip kids outside Koo’s Cafe in Santa Ana / Finding all your early Human League records at the thrift store for $1 ‘cos no one wants them anymore / Alienation from the Ebullition Records die-hards / Getting slammed on HC message boards ‘cos so-and-so was wearing eyeliner from so-and-so band (that isn’t hardcore!) / black “highwater” Wrangler trousers / the word “scenester” being used before the word “hipster” came along / many of your friends being vegan-vegetarian / Booking tours on the telephone / fake British accents / when shows were happening more at legion halls and art spaces than in clubs or bars / buying copies of Skyscraper Magazine for $2 / Stuffing veggie burritos in your mouth at Pokez / Discussions about that die-cast Locust belt buckle / House shows in Olympia / Watching people break “their edge” and going hard in the other direction /

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1. ANTIOCH ARROW | David 1995
2. SATISFACT | Escapism For The Future 1996
3. LONG HIND LEGS | Open Wide 1996
4. SIX FINGER SATELLITE | Paralyzed By Normal Life 1996
5. BRAINIAC | Flash Ram 1996
6. THE VSS | Lunar Weight 1997
7. THE NEED | Vaselina 1997
8. GOGOGO AIRHEART | Red-Dial, Redial 1997
9. THE AUDIENCE | Love A Doorframe 1997
10. THE CALCULATORS | Dead Is Dead 1998
11. CAMERA OBSCURA | We Talked Midi 1998
12. EX-DEAD TEENAGER | When In Rome 1998
13. THE RAPTURE | The Chair That Squeaks 1998
14. I AM SPOONBENDER | What Does The Water Think? 1998
15. BEAUTIFUL SKIN | Sex Is A Triangle For The Perfect Square 1999
16. TRANS AM | Futureworld 1999
17. THE FAINT | Victim Convenience 1999
18. OUT HUD | Homonid Hump 1999
19. RADIO BERLIN | Sibling 1999
20. ANTARCTICA | Absence 1999
21. GLASS CANDY AND THE SHATTERED THEATRE | Metal Gods 2000
22. LOVE LIFE | In Memory Of Me 2000
23. MILEMARKER | Tundra 2000
24. THE VOGUE | Brass And Satin 2000

WHITE LODGE 003 : A SOUNDTRACK TO BURNING YOUTH

SOFT RIOT — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 19:48:19 +0000

Small town idyll and angst-y emotional unrest…

My high school was nestled at the top of a hill backing a forest. The open, expansive grounds were surrounded by a number of farms, an equestrian ground, and a giant grey corrugated metal box that passed as a “recreation centre”… that and a lot of portable classrooms and hidden tennis courts where kids did bad things on lunch break.

My time out of this school was spent with late nights drinking over-brewed drip coffee in 24 hour family restaurants (I was straight edge for a while), putting on shows in weird halls, going to shows in weird halls, hitch-hiking a three hour drive south to Victoria to see shows in weird halls, making loud rackets in bands, and writing zines on a typewriter that needed the right side propped up on a book to make the carriage move properly with the aid of gravity.

It was in this town that was the genesis that formed who I am now and how I think about the world and art. I grew up around a lot of pop music but didn’t grow up on pop music. I was raw, and totally was emersed in the hardcore and punk/post-punk coming out at the time. The catharsis of loud and abrasive music.

There was a great thing that happened with the arrival of punk and hardcore in the late 80s and 90s but I honestly felt the wave that happened in the late 80s and early 90s had as equally great of an impact in those there to see it in their youth back in the day. There was a lot of time spent on this playlist listening through hordes of bands and long lost records to condense the selection to the one seen below. I’ve tried to mix up a few more melodic tracks in the mix that come from the same sort of general “scene” that was happening across North America at the time. This overall selection is from my own perspective at the time and I distilled the choices down to tracks that I still listen to get excited about from time to time even in this present day.

Starting off with the cavernous, murky, and dour sounds of Indian Summer, this collection of tracks represents what I was listening to at the time but also what a hell lot of other kids were listening to at the time.

DISCLAIMER: Many of these tracks were recorded on 4 or 8 tracks, mixed badly, rife with and vinyl crackles and tape hiss, and vocals are lost in the mix, and generally a lot of angst and screaming. If you are “faint at heart” for this sort of thing it might be best to take this particular mix in measured segments, sort of like a syndicated TV show…

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1. INDIAN SUMMER | Orchard 1994
2. UNWOUND Envelope 1993
3. SHOTMAKER Failure 1996
4. SWING KIDS Line 1 1994
5. UNIVERSAL ORDER OF ARMAGEDDON Visible Distance 1994
6. MOSS ICON Kicks The Can 1989
7. RITES OF SPRING In Silence/Words Away 1985
8. LINCOLN Sugarloaf 1993
9. THREE MILE PILOT Chenjesu 1995
10. NATION OF ULYSSES Maniac Dragstrip 1992
11. ANTIOCH ARROW Suspicious Uzi 1993
12. BREAKWATER Seven 1995
13. EMBRACE Building 1985
14. JAWBOX Dreamless 1992
15. PORTRAITS OF PAST The Outlook Is Bleak 1994
16. CLIKATAT IKATOWI Too Simple 1994
17. SPITBOY Wizened 1994
18. HOOVER TNT 1994/1997
19. GIANT’S CHAIR New Orleans 1994
20. SPARKMARKER The Way She Moves 1993
21. JULIA Peripherals 1995
22. CIRCUS LUPUS 7x4x1 1993
23. ANGELHAIR PRE-SUPER MODEL1994
24. THE REPUBLIC OF FREEDOM FIGHTERS Stomach Council 1995

WHITE LODGE PODCAST 002 : SPARKWOOD AND TWENTY ONE

SOFT RIOT — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 23:44:02 +0000

This is the second mix that I have managed to get around to assembling out of a pool of theoretical mixes that I want to do. Time is a pretty precious commodity these days but hopefully this is the first of several more that I’ll cough up over the coming months.

I’ve always been one for listening to music while in that slumber state between being awake and going to sleep. Ambient street noises, dim lights cast down murky halls, ceilings tall and towering in dark rooms. A chance to think and gain momentum into cinematic landscapes. The songs on this mix slowly formed into this sequence after listening to it in different stages over a number of months. I was looking for something filmic — like watching a Kubrick film on a late winter night…

It starts off murky and sinister: dark fields of snow, figures under lamp-posts, nighttime secrets and mystery — moving into movement and melancholy and then gradually into sweet dreams…

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COCTEAU TWINS When Mama Was Moth 1983
ZOVIET FRANCE Soft Helion 1996
GYÖRGY LIGETI Instroitus. Sostenuto 1965
THROBBING GRISTLE Hamburger Lady 1978
COIL Dark River 1991
MATHEW JONSON Marionette 2005
PLASTIKMAN Consumed 1998
LOSCIL Hydrogen 2001
LABRADFORD Comfort 1995
DEATH IN JUNE Crush My Love 1985
YOKO KANNO Ghost In The Shell 2002
CHARALAMBIDES Magnolia 2003
JULEE CRUISE Falling 1985
HENRYK GORECKI Wislo Moja, Wislo Szara 1994
STARS OF THE LID Mulholland 2001

WHITE LODGE PODCAST 001

SOFT RIOT — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 22:36:11 +0000

This mix was originally created on an invite to be a guest on the Young Gentleman’s Club blog. I provided a mix for them that originally debuted on their site.

The magic number is 22… This is the first “set” I’ve compiled since I used to DJ post-punk nights back in the early part of this decade. I once was actively into exploring music, then fell out of it for a while, and now actively back into it again.

It’s really hard to condense an insanely massive library of music that I listen too, am inspired by, and that has soundtracked parts of my life. Since moving to London UK I’ve been listening to a lot of new stuff, re-discovering a lot of old stuff, seeing bands, hearing songs in clubs, etc. I guess you could say that this first mix is a vague document of bands and songs that passed through my English life since early 2008.

Starting with“Petrol” by Severed Heads and ending with the dub/post-hardcore of “Electrolux” by Hoover, some of the tracks are old “classics” from my music past (Girls Against Boys, Slaves), some new bands I’ve heard and seen (Joe and Will Ask, Health, etc.) — others are just incidental. It weaves from guitars to beats, drones to dancing on your feet, and all the moods in between.

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SEVERED HEADS Petrol 1985
JOE AND WILL ASK Claymore 2008
THE KNIFE We Share Our Mother’s Health 2006
PSYCHIC TV Godstar 1985
THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA The Garden of Earthly Delights 1968
GIRLS AGAINST BOYS Life In Pink 1996
THE BUG feat. KILLA P + FLOW DAN Skeng 2007
LATE OF THE PIER Space and The Woods 2008
JOHN FOXX Plaza 1980
ALTER EGO Why Not!? 2005
ARTHUR RUSSELL Lucky Cloud (Return) 1984
IKE YARD Losses 1982
CHROME Abstract Nympho 1979
AN EXPERIMENT ON A BIRD IN THE AIR PUMP Lights Out 2008
SLAVES Chemical Priest 1999
HEALTH Triceratops (Acid Girls Remix) 2007
M83 Kim & Jessie 2008
GLORIA MUNDI I Individual 1978
SCREAMING LORD SUTCH Flashing Light 1969
ADD N TO (X) Metal Fingers in My Body 1999
THESE NEW PURITANS Numerology aka Numbers 2008
HOOVER Electrolux 1993